1994 Ford Thunderbird LX from North America - Comments

Catalytic converters were completely clogged from the factory.

Car was in the shop for approximately 4 of the first twelve months I owned it because no one could figure out what was wrong with it.

Thought the transmission was bad, was replaced however it was later found to be the clogged catalytic converters that were causing the car to decelerate when I was trying to accelerate.

Automatic antenna broke.

Sold it to my sister. CD player and

radio broke.

Moonroof sticks. Won't open sometimes.

Had aftermarket fog lamps installed, they only worked about two months.

Worst car I ever owned! I cannot believe I sold my Turbo Coupe for this car.

For having a V8, the car was not fast at all. Very sluggish even after it was repaired, not a quick response at all when the accelerator was punched.

Handled like a boat. Very loopy steering, car was not responsive at all. It was like driving a Buick. Cornered poorly, you always felt like the car was not in your control. Extremely disappointing after having owned a Turbo Coupe. This car was no pleasure to drive.

Car was constantly in the shop. Car would decelerate as I was going to pass, had it to seven dealerships and had multiple parts replaced before it was finally discovered that the catalytic converters were completely plugged and I was told that they came from the factory like that.

Interior was roomy and comfortable.

Not a particularly attractive car.

Buddy.. next time look at what you are buying before you buy it... hire mechanic or something.

You have got to be the biggest moron I know if you really think that. You have no taste. The biggest problem ith your car it seems that you didn't know how to drive it. It just had to much power for you.

I don't know about the v6, but my v8 was way powerful. It was not the fastest coupe out there, but believe me it would get out of its own way if it had to. I never experienced the deceleration problems other reviewers have mentioned.

Your review obviously came out of a Twilight zone episode. My 94 t-bird rocks!

That is like so weird you had all these negative experiences with your T- Bird. Maybe you didn't take care of it. My mom bought the car in 1996 with 20 miles on it. She gave it to me my junior year in high school in 2001 with 72,000. Now that I am a junior in college, I still have the T-Bird with a total of 185,000 miles. I have had a couple of things go wrong, but nothing major. I love my 1995 T-Bird, and I have never heard some one talk so negative about it before. Even my mom who now drives a 2005 Lexus RX330 says she still loves the T-Bird. When she came to visit me, she drove it for the first time since she gave it to me five years ago, and she still loves it. And by the way, this car is pretty fast, I mean of course its no race car buy it does move.

In 1995 I purchased my 4th T-Bird. I had previously owned a 1980 model (my first car), a 1985 model Super Coupe, a 1993 model V-6 (after being used to the V-8 and the SC, the V-6 was not powerful enough,) and then my 1995 4.6 Lr V-8. LX T-Bird... (Silver-Blue Mist)

To this day, it uses almost no oil at all and still gets 20+mpg. I can tell when it needs a tune-up because it starts to lose some of it's "jump" on the take-off. Yes.. it still has that jump after 11 years and 171,000 miles. It still lays rubber when I want to show it off... and I still do show it off.

It now has around 171,000 miles on it. It is all I have driven for the last 11 years. In that amount of time, I have had to replace the battery once... last winter, I had the ball-joints replaced last October, I have had to replace breaks 2 or 3 times, I have had it tuned up regularly and had the oil and transmission fluid changed on a regular schedule, I have replaced tires as needed. I keep a check on the radiator fluid, but have never had an issue with it.

And... I have had 2 Oxygen Sensors replaced...

To whomever stated that they had their CC stopped up from the factory and had it in the shop for 4 months without the problem being discovered...

You will forgive me if I have a hard time accepting that it came from the factory with a clogged converter. Converters clog after years and years of use and abuse... and usually even then it only happens if the car is improperly tuned or has incorrect timing...

A brand-new car wouldn't need a tune-up and the T-bird is self-timed.

Also... a clogged converter from the factory would surely have caused problems during the test-drive. Apparently someone thought it had plenty of power on the test-drive... They paid around $28,000.00 1994 dollars for it. Converters don't just clog over night. It takes many years of exhaust from a bad fuel mixture causing severe overheating... hot enough to melt the ceramic substrate inside... to clog a converter.

I have to assume your local Ford guy was... well... not-so-bright and had no modern equipment to work with and no knowledge of sensors, etc. Any emissions tester would have picked that problem up.

Even more... the T-Bird is OBDII equipped. What that means is this; a diagnostic machine would have picked up a problem with the engine being unable to expel exhaust. The O2 sensor, located between the engine and the converter would have sensed how much oxygen was in the engine and would give an OBDII code for the problem. A few minutes on a diagnostic machine would have told your repair guy everything he needed to know.

Those little O2 sensors are pretty cool. The T-Bird has 4 of them. They can be bothersome when they make your check-engine light come on and you don't know why... but they will save the life of your engine... and possibly yours as well... I mean... the exhaust system exists for a reason.

Either way... even without modern machinery... All they have to do to check the converter's functioning is remove the sensor and see if the car's performance improves.

Pretty simple really.

Call me Doubting-Thomas-ette... but I would guess that the problem was probably a faulty sensor... not a factory-clogged converter. And the diagnostics machine would have picked that up as well.

Even I know that... And I'm not even a mechanic, I'm a Psychotherapist.

Gypsy-Girl.

OK, I was wondering if someone could help me out. I have a 1995 Ford T-Bird which I love. It has 190,000 miles and is still going strong, but I seem to have a bit of a problem. You see my Catalytic Converter is making a raddling sound as I drive. I was told that it has like three of them and one is bad which is causing the rattle because it broke inside, one is 1/3 bad and the third one is fine. They said since it comes as a whole unit I cound't just replace one or two. My engine light is on so I told the guy at the dealer I want to fix the issue. The only problem is that when they tryed to read the code from the data link to see what caused the converter to go out it had no power coming from it and won't read any codes. Now they are telling me that I have to see why the data link isn't working because it would be pointless to replace the coverter untill they figure out what made it go out in the first place, and since they can't do that with out the data link working to tell them what the problem is, I have to spend money to see why its not working. they suspect the 02 sensors need replaing, but want to make sure. I want to know what the long term affects are when operating your car when the converters need replacing. Its been like that for about a year and the only thing thats a problem is the raddling. The power is fine and it doesn't overheat.